Local man pleads guilty in Skyline student kidnapping case

San Diego County Sheriff's Department

Jack Henry Doshay

Jack Henry Doshay (San Diego County Sheriff's Department)

Dana Littlefield

A North County man accused of attacking a 7-year-old girl outside a Solana Beach elementary school pleaded guilty Thursday, March 16, to felony charges and agreed to be sentenced to more than a decade in prison. Nearly two years after he was first charged in the incident, Jack Henry Doshay, 24, admitted to one count of kidnapping and one count of assault with intent to commit child molestation, stemming from the March 23, 2015, incident.

Doshay will be sentenced to 10 years and four months in state prison at a hearing set for May 31. Vista Superior Court Judge Timothy Casserly said the defendant will also be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of this life.

According to the District Attorney’s Office, Doshay attacked the young victim outside Skyline Elementary School in Solana Beach shortly after school had let out for the day. Investigators said a stranger dressed in baseball clothes approached the girl, put packing tape over her mouth and moved her toward a secluded area near the back of the school.When questioned by the judge on Thursday, Doshay admitted he forcibly held the victim and moved her a substantial distance without her consent, facts that supported the kidnapping charge. He also admitted he intended to touch the girl sexually. The girl fought back and was able to get away.

After Doshay was charged in the Solana Beach attack, he was indicted on charges related to a second incident in 2010 outside an elementary school in Rancho Santa Fe. Prosecutors contended that a 10-year-old girl told investigators in 2015 that she was 5 when a man lured her to a shed at Solana Santa Fe Elementary School to look at a “white bunny.” When the girl was behind the shed, the man grabbed her by the hips, turned her around and tried to remove her pants, prosecutors said. She screamed and kicked her attacker in the groin. He ran off.

After a lengthy hearing, Judge K. Michael Kirkman dismissed two felony charges, both involving a lewd act committed on a child, along with allegations that Doshay committed crimes against more than one victim. Defense lawyers Paul Pfingst and James Pokorny had argued that the description the 10-year-old gave of her attacker did not match Doshay, and that prosecutors failed to present all available evidence related to that issue to the grand jury. They also said a sheriff’s deputy who went to the scene of the incident when it was reported in 2010 and questioned the girl, determined later that the incident was “unfounded,” meaning no crime had been committed.

On Thursday, the victim in the 2015 incident in Solana Beach had a front row seat in the packed courtroom with her parents and other supporters when Doshay pleaded guilty. And when it was over, she leaped into her mother’s arms for a big hug. Outside the courtroom, the girl — now 9 — described her attacker as a “big bully” who had frightened her and hurt her feelings when he told her she would never see her mother or father again.

“I wish I had the chance to tell the judge to put Jack in jail for a long time,” she said, reading from a white piece of paper covered in plastic. “I was 7 years old when this incident happened, and now I am older. I am confident that the judge did make the right decision on how long to put him in prison and what will happen next.

“I am glad police caught him and he’s going to prison now so I don’t ever have to see him again,” she continued. “Like Dr. Seuss always says, ‘Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.’ I’ll always have that memory that I got away and he messed with the wrong girl.”

At the end of her statement, she thanked Deputy District Attorney Ryan Saunders and the investigators who worked on the case, as well as family and friends who had supported her throughout the ordeal. And she gave a special thanks to her brother, who had taught her how to fight back. Doshay, the son of a former investment banker who is a minority owner of the San Diego Padres, remains free on bond until sentencing.